A. Related Applications
There are no applications related hereto heretofore filed in this or any foreign country.
B. Field of Invention
Our invention relates generally to creation of fine patternation in chocolate surfaces and more particularly to offset printing a colored cocoa butter pattern on a printing sheet and thereafter embedding it in a molded chocolate surface.
C. Background and Description of Prior Art
Semi-solid sweet chocolate has been a desired comestible product, especially in the Northern temperate regions of the world, ever since its commercial availability in the middle 19th Century. Almost from the time of its cultural introduction various aesthetic enhancements of the product have been attempted to increase its human desirability and attendant economic viability. Principal among these enhancements has been the configuration of a chocolate product in one fashion or another to a form that is pleasing to the optical senses to synergistically enhance its overall desirability. Such aesthetic enhancement also has potential added commercial value as it may take the form of advertising without effecting the ultimate edibility of the comestible.
Ontologically the aesthetic configurational development of chocolate products has progressed from early stages of three dimensional shaping of the product in gross, through a medial period of embossed or bas-relief ornamentation embodying alphanumeric characters, ornament, or both, to a fairly sophisticated present day state of finely defined ornament and alphanumeric symbology that is sometimes embedded within the comestible product to produce a smooth continuous peripheral surface. The sophistication and complexity of processes for creating such ornamentation have increased substantially, generally in an accelerating relationship to the increase in aesthetic appealability of the product. The instant invention presents a new and novel process for creating ornamentation of this latter and most recent type.
Though it has long been realized that the finer and more accurately a design may be executed the more aesthetic appeal it has in chocolate confectionary, the production of fine design and alphanumeric symbols have evaded the industry, primarily by reason of the nature of the product itself and the materials and methods used in creating designs in or on it. Semi-solid castable chocolate is a quite complex mixture that is known more by its empirical reactions than by its theoretical nature and because of this, the constituency of the commercially available product varies widely. This situation is exacerbated by the lack of any particular standards or meaningful governmental controls in the field. Additionally to create an optically pleasing design, the design itself must be optically distinguishable from the chocolate matrix surrounding it. This can be readily accomplished with bas-relief design, but in an embedded design if chocolate be used as a design material, it must be modified in some fashion so that it may be optically distinguished from the matrix. This has heretofore been attempted, but the results have not been satisfactory firstly, because it is difficult to modify chocolate material while yet maintaining it as a desirable food product and secondly, the material that is modified has generally been substantially the same as the matrix material so that when the two are associated, the boundaries between them tend not to be sharply defined and oftentimes become irregular and distinguishable only with difficulty, if at all. Settable chocolate also is a difficult material to color or modify in color as its dark, dense, opaque nature does not well accept food dyes or pigments to require use of large amounts of such materials to cause any coloration and to require any light colored or filter type additives to be added in such large quantities as to be practically ineffective.
Our invention solves these problems by using modified cocoa butter as the decorative material. This material is a solid at ordinary room temperatures and viscously plastic at human body temperatures to make it rather ideal for placement and use as a decorative material in chocolate. Cocoa butter is readily colorable by ordinary food dyes and pigments in ordinary amounts, since it physically is a substantially colorless translucent fatty material and it is a product quite as edible as any of the other components of the ultimate confection.
The embodiment of pattern materials in chocolate presents problems in accurately configuring the material in the first instance and in faithfully maintaining that configuration after the material is embedded. Heretofore decorative material has been configured and placed by secondary casting, extrusion and stenciling but these methods have had their limitations because the chemical nature of the material and physical principles involved have prevented fine detailing and formation of a smooth continuous surface on a decorated comestible. In a few instances, an intaglio type of decoration placement has been attempted by creating an indented pattern in the surface of a chocolate matrix, filling the indentations with a secondary visually distinguishable material, and thereafter scraping the surface of the entire product after setting to leave the patternation in place in the chocolate matrix. This is a relatively time consuming and difficult process, generally has not allowed fine patternization of a faithful nature and produces surfaces which are not smooth and planar but generally rather ragged looking.
Our invention solves these problems by configuring the patternation material by screen printing upon a secondary printing sheet surface over which chocolate may later be cast. Since pure cocoa butter does not contain much if any of the particulate matter of chocolate liqueur, it is quite readily adaptable to the screen printing processes and in general may be quite accurately configured by that process, with the limits of accuracy of configuration being determined largely by the ordinary screening parameters and particularly screen mesh size and viscosity of the screened material. The viscosity of cocoa butter can also be better regulated thermally than can chocolate matrix material and its thermal reactions tend to be more consistent, uniform and predictable.
Most importantly, however, we have found that if a pattern of material comprising colored or filled cocoa butter be deposited by screen printing, it tends to set or form crystalline structure that stabilize its configuration after a period of time. The details of this reaction are not definitively known, but the reaction is sufficient to maintain sharp pattern images when the aged pattern material is embedded in an ordinary settable chocolate matrix. This crystalline reaction develops upon aging at room temperature for approximately twenty-four hours after placement. Such an aged pattern will maintain substantially the same fineness as existed at the time of its deposition when embodied in a settable chocolate matrix, while a pattern embodied in chocolate immediately after deposition will tend to intermix and define irregular surface boundaries in a more or less haphazard fashion along its interface with the matrix material. Various colorants or fillers in unaged pattern material will also tend to partially intermix with adjacent chocolate material to form indistinct boundaries.
The process of our invention also provides additional secondary benefits. The cocoa butter patternation material is a translucent fatty substance that readily accepts various food dyes, coloration materials, opacifiers and fillers to maintain a rather translucent colored appearance which with addition of opacifying materials becomes more intensified. In addition, the fatty nature of the cocoa butter, and its critical temperatures, readily avail themselves to known techniques presently used in screen printing. The material plasticizes to a consistency similar to ordinary screen printing inks slightly above room temperatures to make it ideally workable at temperatures easily attainable. Since the patternation material is not per se dependent upon the nature of an embedding chocolate matrix, our process is not limited particularly by the nature of the chocolate matrix material, so variances in that material do not substantially effect our process. Cocoa butter of commerce is a relatively uniform product that normally does not produce variation over very wide ranges in physical or chemical constituency. Our process also requires no specialized materials other than those presently commonly used in the confectionary arts relating to settable sweet chocolate, and it requires no complex or difficult operations or unusual apparatus other than the operations and apparatus presently used in the screen printing and confectionary arts.
Our invention lies not in any one of these features per se, but rather in the synergistic combination of all of them that give rise to the apparatus and process of our invention and the product resulting therefrom as hereinafter more fully specified and claimed.